5 Ways to Increase Your Content Marketing Success Rate

Content marketing is an established PR tactic, but it can sometimes feel like wielding a double-edged sword. Done well, it can generate increased views, media coverage and third-party mentions. Done poorly, it not only can decrease those very things but also produce public backlash.

To increase your content marketing success rate, consider the following five tips:

1. Focus on your niche.

Content marketing often fails because it’s written with an “every man” in mind rather than a specific person. Content needs to be targeted to the people who have a genuine interest in your product or service for a particular reason. If you can write content for that person based on that reason, you will see social engagement increase.

2. Perfect your pitch.

You can and should pitch your created, or “owned,” content to the media. Not promoted content marketing is invisible content marketing. Your content becomes the least visited booth at the carnival because you simply forgot to put out the signs.

Put out the signs! Write concise, clear pitches to key media contacts. Include links to your content assets – many times your pitches aren’t viewed because they hit the firewall and were either sent to spam or returned to you.

3. Aim for quality.

Almost everybody says to aim for quality over quantity, but few do. It’s easy to be lured into the practice of disseminating content 24/7. It often produces short-term SEO and organic search benefits.

It’s not sustainable long-term from either a content creation or audience receptivity standpoint. With the former, you’ll burn out even if you’re using automation tools to augment your created content with curated.

With the latter, your audience tunes you out. You’re no longer relevant or interesting. You’ve become a barrage of content. You have to become, as Brian Solis says, the “signal” amidst all the noise.

4. Partner with influencers.

Influencers aren’t always celebrities. They’re the people who are important to your target audience. If you can discover who they are and develop a relationship with them, you’re more likely to have them share and write about your content and product or service.

Developing that relationship takes time and effort – any relationship does – but it’s worth it. You’ll become a shortlisted resource and partner not only for articles they’re writing but also for preferred vendor lists. When you form a relationship with your influencers and provide quality content to them consistently, you become one of the first businesses or organizations they think of when asked to give a recommendation.

5. Think arms and legs.

Millipedes are one of the creepiest bugs on the face of the planet, but it’s helpful to think of your content in terms of them. Each piece of content has multiple arms and legs. If you publish a study, you can turn it into an infographic and video spotlights. You can pull interesting stats and develop tweets or visual content for Instagram or Pinterest.

Depending on your audience, you might even consider Vine or Snapchat. A study about teenagers’ favorite frozen yogurt flavors, for example, would perform better on Snapchat. That particular study could even be pitched to BuzzFeed. It’s the perfect home for such information.

If you want your content marketing to impact your PR activities and outcomes, consider the five tips outlined above. You’ll start to see more audience participation and interaction, media coverage and third-party reviews.

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Erin Feldman is the director of editorial services at Tenacity5 Media. When she isn’t researching, writing, and editing blog posts and white papers, she writes poetry and essays, draws her favorite Write Right character, and plans what art form to study next. She’s based in Austin, Texas and can be found on Twitter @erinmfeldman.